


This Ain't a Getaway

by twinfinite



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, eliot and margo are fancy together, international travel gone horribly awry, margo owns all the brain cells in this relationship, maybe some fluff?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2020-01-25 19:38:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18581245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinfinite/pseuds/twinfinite
Summary: In which Eliot is a stubborn idiot but Margo is still his ride-or-die anyway.oran exploration into why "waiting for appendectomy" ended up on Eliot's list of his most regretful memories.





	1. Places I've Not Seen Before

**Author's Note:**

> I started watching this show like two weeks ago and got in super deep and then the season four finale happened and I couldn't even bring myself to watch it. I just had my sister inform me of the absolute fuckery and then I listened to the saddest rendition of Take on Me ever on repeat for days. And then I wrote this. 
> 
> Because let's just take it back to simpler days, okay? I love Margo and Eliot's relationship so much.

In hindsight, Eliot liked to see the whole incident as an unfortunate matter of bad timing. Margo might disagree, but he was certain that things would have been handled differently if it hadn’t all gone down during their first vacation together as best friends.

It was the spring of their first year together at Brakebills. The Trials were still in recent memory, and Margo’s birthday was rapidly approaching. Eliot couldn’t help but feel like he’d be the biggest asshole on the planet if he didn’t deliver a majorly spectacular gift; realistically speaking, he would never have made it this far into the year if he hadn’t had Margo by his side.

The moment he realized that her birthday fell during the week of their spring break, Eliot began some serious scheming. Margo must have suspected something, because he wasn’t exactly subtle by constantly disappearing off to the library during hours they usually reserved for watching Gossip Girl and drinking wine. To her credit, when he finally pulled her aside on the Saturday night before his plan was set to occur, she still played it off like it was something of a surprise.

“So, what’s this, then?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Happy early birthday, Bambi,” he said, brandishing a pair of plane tickets with a flourish.

Margo’s eyes immediately lit up, and she grabbed for the offering without hesitation.

“Tickets to…London? Ooh, so you mean…?”

“…that we’re about to go on the most epic week-long pub crawl known to man?”

Margo threw her whole body into an excited, bouncing hug. “You remembered!”

“Of course I remembered!”

They had bonded, back in the earliest days of knowing one another, by fantasizing about riding the London Eye together.

“But that’s not all, is it?” Margo questioned, noting his enduringly devious smirk. “You wouldn’t have been ditching our Netflix nights just for vacation planning. What’s with the one-way tickets? Are you planning on us running off to Europe indefinitely?”

“I’m so glad you asked! That’s where this comes in.” Eliot pulled a crumpled book page out from his back pocket and delicately smoothed it out for Margo. “We can get to London the boring way at first, but we’re going to spice it up a little bit on the way back. This portal spell should be perfect.”

Margo peered at the spell, pausing in her excitement just long enough to carefully read through the instructions and understand Eliot’s plan.

“Wait, this is…a permanent door? Infinite possible uses? Oh, this spell actually doesn’t look too hard! El, this is going to absolutely revolutionize our weekend plans like, forever!” she paused, looking contemplative. “But where should we put it?”

“I figured that’s up to the birthday girl. You know, within reason. We probably shouldn’t dump a portal to America in the middle of Buckingham Palace.”

“Oh, I think we could pull it off. But I have an even better idea. Let’s rank all of the places we visit and put it wherever wins first place.”

“Genius. I love it!”

 

 

And twenty-four hours later, they were sitting next to each other on their flight to London, drawing up an elaborate ranking system while sipping on shitty airplane gin and tonics.

“Ten point deduction for any place that doesn’t serve alcohol,” Eliot declared.

“Naturally,” Margo concurred, writing this tidbit down under the “Most Important Factors” heading. “A three point deduction if they have any cheap American beer on tap, though.”

“But five points gained if going to this establishment gets one of us laid.”

“Yeah, but ten points lost if they suck in bed.”

“True, true. Well then, plus two points if the hookup results in multiple orgasms.”

By the time the plane landed, they had filled far too many pages of Margo’s notebook with increasingly arbitrary rules. The list was practically unusable in its complexity, but the seven-hour flight had definitely gone by quickly. When they exited the airport at long last, night had fallen, effectively delaying the start of their tourism until the following day.

 Exhausted from travel, Eliot fell into the soft sheets of the most exquisite hotel room that magic could buy and awaited the next day, eager to wake up and treat Margo to the most decadent trip possible.

 

 

            Eliot liked to play the part of a well-travelled gentleman, but this trip was quite frankly his first international experience. Jet-lag, he decided, was much worse than people tended to let on. When he woke up, he felt as though he hadn’t slept at all, and his stomach was in a twist from what he imagined must have been the sketchy airplane chicken.

“Margoooo,” he called out in the direction of the Margo-sized lump in the blankets in the next bed over. “You’re supposed to be a seasoned traveler. Why’d you let me eat that gross airplane food?”

 “Don’t you dare blame me for that. I told you to pick the veggie option,” she grumbled. Eliot threw his pillow at her, but tragically missed. The pillow flopped aside, and Margo remained in her blanket cocoon, unscathed.

“It’s already 10 AM. We’re behind schedule.” Eliot noted, doing his best to ignore the fact that he felt embarrassingly inclined to cancel their morning plans in lieu of another ten hours of sleep. “We’re supposed to start our day off with a full English breakfast and a pint.”

Upon hearing the word breakfast, Margo perked up.

“Yeah, I wanna eat a scone ASAP. I’m fucking starving.”

Eliot could barely remember a time that he’d felt less hungry in his life, but for Margo’s sake, he swung himself out of bed and began readying himself for vacation day one.

 

            As per the plan, Margo and Eliot went through the most classic, touristy-as-hell activities during the first day, just to say they had. Their full English breakfast was followed by a walk along the Thames, a ride on the London eye, and pictures in front of Big Ben. By 7 PM, Eliot felt even more bone-tired, but the pain in his stomach had been mostly tamed, probably thanks to the several pints enjoyed over the course of the afternoon.

            The night passed by in a haze as Margo swept him from pub to pub, writing down notes as they went. In total, they spent significant time at four portal possibilities. The list included a classic pub, a dive bar, a gay bar, and an overly trendy club. They scored 101.5, 51.2, -3.25, and -235, respectively, on a scale that had stopped making sense somewhere along the Atlantic Ocean.

            They both did quite well in every location; all they had to do was open their mouths and utter a single phrase in their American accents and suddenly a handful of Brits were charmed by the beautiful foreigners. Eliot was certain that Margo was going to bring home the most attractive lad available from the final club, and he had even steeled himself for a night spent on their suite’s pull-out couch. Instead, though, Margo flashed him a look that his drunken mind couldn’t quite translate before promptly squashing down the poor boy’s hopes and dreams of getting laid.

            They stumbled home late, just the two of them, and fell into bed wordlessly, blissfully.

 

 

            When Eliot threw up in the shower the next morning, it really should have been his first clue. He hadn’t thrown up from a hangover since he was sixteen, after all. Rather than concern, however, the only emotion he could really conjure up was vague shame. He scrambled to clean away all evidence, paranoid that Margo would find out and never let him live down such a rookie move.

The dull ache in his stomach was regretfully persistent, and at that point he wasn’t entirely sure he could chalk it up to bad meat anymore. Everything that Eliot and Margo had eaten in the last day had been top notch, and besides, Margo seemed completely fine.

Margo’s blunt raps on the bathroom door startled Eliot out of any further consideration.

“Hey, lemme in! I need to pee!” Margo yelled through the locked door.

Eliot hastily swished some mouthwash, washed his face, and opened the door to face her. Margo impatiently put a hand on his shoulder, making a move to shove him out of the way so she could have the room to herself. She paused for a brief moment though, and he cursed her perceptiveness.

“Rough morning?” she asked.

“Oh, shut up,” he groused, in no mood.

“Please don’t tell me you’re tapping out after day one! No offense to any of those places last night, but I don’t think we’re even close to finding somewhere portal worthy.”

“God, no,” he agreed. “Don’t you worry, we’re going to find it. We still have the rest of the week.”

That was all of the conversation Margo had the bladder capacity to handle, fortunately for Eliot. The moment the door shut behind him, he sat back down on the bed and contemplated whether or not he had enough time to buy some Advil while Margo was in the shower. He decided to risk it, and the moment he heard the water running he went down to the hotel’s small convenience store, bought the pills alongside some snacks and gum, and dry-swallowed three capsules on his way back to their room.

The pills barely touched the pain, but he could at least fake his way through the morning’s shopping spree on Oxford Street with what little relief they did provide. Combined with the double expresso that he ordered at breakfast, it just barely managing to prop him up. The rational part of his brain was distantly screaming at him that it really wouldn’t be that big a deal to just admit to Margo that he felt like a steaming pile of shit, but the paranoid side of his brain was much stronger.

He’d probably never forgive himself if he ruined Margo’s birthday vacation because he was laid up with a pathetic case of a wonky stomach. It was better to not risk it.

Besides, once they resumed their pub crawl the pain was again buried underneath the pleasant buzz of a couple of pints.

Led by a hasty Google search for “the most British pub in London”, their first stop was a place so tacky that it was clearly an American’s idea of what British meant. They picked at a forgettable plate of fish and chips while watching tourists wearing fanny packs take selfies with the British regalia plastered all over the walls.

            (-56 points)

A search for “pubs with the strongest alcohol” lead them to both down a Pimm’s cup in a much more charming, subtle bar.

“Once you’ve tried homemade moonshine, your bar for alcohol strength is fucked forever,” Eliot declared.

“Yeah, this is literally just a more social acceptable version of jungle juice,” Margo added.

            (97 points)

One more search for “women drink free in London” sent them to dimly lit, slightly seedy hole in the wall. What it lacked in class, it made up for in cheap liquor and literal droves of Brits ready to give their best go at charming Margo. Unfortunately, the lack of class translated onto the bar’s patrons as well, and Margo remained completely uncharmed for the extent of their visit.

            (-1000 points)

By that point, night had fallen, and they could easily fall in step with the pub-goers of the evening to guide them to their next location. They spotted an unusually attractive and glamorously dressed couple and decided to see where they went; this found them at a small, upscale tavern filled with quite a few more men wearing tweed than the last few establishments.

Just as their glasses of wine had been provided by the bartender, Eliot was hit with a powerful wave of nausea that he knew couldn’t be related to alcohol. He was only five or so drinks into the night- that amount of booze wouldn’t have been enough to floor his teenaged self, much less his current one.

Suddenly terrified that he might hork up fish and chips all over the bar, Eliot scrambled to make an exit with dignity.

“I’m going to get some air for a sec,” he stumbled out, internally wincing at how awkward that sounded. He turned away from the bar without pausing to look at Margo’s undoubtedly confused face.

The touch of the crisp night breeze combined with his panic that he was about to make a scene in the middle of the nicest bar they’d managed to find was enough to sober Eliot up, and with that feeling came more awareness of the stabbing feeling that seemed to have wrapped its way around his intestines. Leaning against the cool brick behind him, Eliot tried to decide whether or not he was actually going to be able to keep himself together for the rest of the night. Closing his eyes, he willed his body to cooperate. When he opened them again, Margo had appeared, her brow furrowed with that classic Margo judgement.

“You know, you could have just told me you were sick,” she said, her voice riding the line between playful and stern.

“I can rally,” Eliot returned, woefully unconvincing given his current grimace. “I think we’re onto something here for your birthday portal.”

 “Seriously, do you think I was one of those awful bitches who cried at her sweet sixteen when her parents didn’t buy her a Maserati? Come on, El. It’s fine, let’s just get out of here.”

Margo reached up to fling her arm around his shoulder and peeled him away from the wall towards the curb. “I’m calling us an Uber.”

“I still blame the British Airways chicken,” Eliot said, swallowing heavily in attempt to keep his dinner down. “Just need to get it out of my system.”

“I think you’d be shitting a lot more if you had food poisoning, honestly.” Margo pointed out.

“Well, something I ate definitely hates me.”

“You’ve barely eaten this whole trip, El.”

“I’m sure I’ll feel better by tomorrow,” Eliot plowed on, ignoring her skepticism.

“Yeah, I’m sure you will.” There was an air of sarcasm tinged into her words, but also a thread of hope.


	2. But You Worry Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's more of this! Margo and Eliot's dialogue is so fun to write. They swear as much as I do in daily life, so I don't have to censor myself. Fuckin superb.

Their mutual optimism, as it turned out, was entirely misguided. After many Advils and one of the worst, most fitful nights of sleep Eliot had ever had the displeasure of sweating through, he woke up the next morning in a brand-new level of pain.         

“I’d ask you how you’re feeling but I think I can safely assume you feel like shit,” Margo remarked when she emerged from her morning shower to find him curled into a damp, shivering ball.       

Under normal circumstances, Eliot would have had ten different retorts ready for such a blow to his appearance, but his brain felt too much like soup to be bothered.          

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Think I’ve gotta sit today out. Take pictures?”

Margo gracefully swung herself onto the bed next to Eliot, careful not to disturb him too much, and gave him a look that was somehow simultaneous loving and scathing.

“Haven’t we been over this? I’m not ditching you on _our_ trip, dumbass. Anyway, any good vacation has at least one day scheduled in to just totally unwind. That’ll be today. Now, where’s the remote?”

Eliot gestured vaguely towards the bedside table with the arm that wasn’t currently curled protectively around his screaming stomach. Margo leaned over him and snatched the remote up; within thirty seconds she located a channel playing Dirty Dancing.

Despite how generally miserable he was at the complete downswing the trip seemed to have taken because of him, Eliot smiled. He could always trust Margo to find the perfect thing to cheer him up.

“I’m going to call in an order for room service so we can have breakfast in bed. Do you want anything?” Margo asked. “We can really commit to this whole relaxation thing and feed each other grapes and shit from the fruit platter.”

Eliot’s smile faded, and he let out a grumpy groan as an answer.  

“Okay, okay, jeez. I’m getting you some dry toast, though. You need to eat something.”

Not wanting to bother Margo, Eliot did, in fact, end up nibbling on some toast while they watched Eliot’s third favorite movie dance sequence. He tried to focus on the TV screen, but the haze of pain made it difficult to think of anything else. He glanced over at Margo, looking to see if she seemed content with the current course of the day, and caught her in the process of doing the same thing to him. Her gaze was distant, thoughtful, and he seriously doubted she had been genuinely watching the movie at all.

He raised an eyebrow pointedly, as if to say don’t you know it’s rude to stare? Can you possibly just not?          

“Hey, don’t give me that look, Eliot. You should see yourself right now! This is honestly kind of hard to watch. You know I’m not exactly great at playing Nurse Warm and Fuzzy, but you’ve gotta give me something to work with here. Be honest, what’s going on with you?”

Eliot sighed, and then cringed when the movement sent another shooting pain to his side.

“Honestly? No clue. Just…feel bad.” All ability for eloquence seemed to have abandoned his body at last.

Margo’s brow furrowed even deeper, and Eliot could feel the unease radiating off of her. The caretaker role was certainly not Margo’s strong suit, but she was never one to run away from the challenge. Instead, she pulled herself closer to him. She smoothed the sweaty curls away from his eyes and placed a cool hand on his cheek.

“You definitely have a fever,” she informed him. “That probably has something to do with why you look like death. Are you okay hanging out by yourself for a little bit? I’m going on a supply run.”

“Supplies?”

“Yeah, I figured I’d buy you the standard sick person shit. I didn’t exactly pack ginger ale and crackers in my carry-on, you know?”

“You don’t have to—”

“Call me if you need anything, okay?” Wisely, she didn’t give him the chance to protest.

Eliot dozed in the time she was gone, and he vaguely registered the fact that Dirty Dancing had faded into Grease. The sound of their hotel room door reopening cut through the notes of “Summer Nights” playing in the background.

Margo climbed back into bed with him and put a delicate hand on his shoulder, pulling him back into full consciousness. He heard the crumple of a plastic bag nearby, and he watched as Margo pulled out some of her newly purchased items.

“Okay, I didn’t really know what I was doing so I just sort of…bought everything. What do you want, painkillers? Ginger ale? Flu medicine? Antacids? Whiskey?”

“Painkillers,” he practically begged. “Whatever’s the strongest. Maybe some whiskey, too, if you’re offering.”  

“That was a trick question. I think whiskey would probably kill you right now.”

“You’re so cruel, Bambi,” he whined, but he took the offering of pills with a swig from the innocent bottle of water Margo produced with only mild begrudging spirit.

“You know I’m right.”

Eliot conceded to this point by attempting to bury himself even deeper into the blankets. He tried to find a position that was marginally comfortable and failed miserably. The blankets were still damp with sweat, and this made them essentially useless in his search for warmth.

“Hey, El? Not to kick you while you’re down or anything, but maybe you should take a shower? You’re basically drenched, and it’s getting kinda ripe. Anyway, it might make you feel better.”

The concept of a hot shower seemed like heaven on earth, but the process of actually getting to the shower felt equally hellish. If he’d been alone, Eliot most likely would have stayed in bed until the pain went away or the maids found his corpse, whichever came first. It was really the inconvenience to Margo that made Eliot at all inclined to attempt movement.

“Sorry to offend you with my stench,” Eliot muttered. He tried to keep his tone snarky but it came out sounding hurt.

“I’m just trying to help,” Margo reminded him, gentler now.

“No, no, I get it. I’m going,” Eliot said, already bracing himself for the effort of standing up. He weakly swatted away the sheets and swung his legs out of bed for the first time that day. That process went well enough, but when he hoisted himself up and took a first step, the stabbing in his side intensified so horribly that he could feel all of the blood drain from his face. He tried to keep his mouth clamped shut to avoid making any embarrassing noises, but a small sob still managed to slip out. The sound was alarming even to him; it sounded shockingly reminiscent of a dying cat.

He quickly aborted his shower plans and sagged back down onto the mattress.

“Nope,” he gasped. “Too much.”

Hearing Eliot’s struggle, Margo shot out of bed and was at his side in an adrenaline-fueled record time. She grabbed his shoulders to steady him and looked at him with an unsettlingly frightened stare.

“Eliot,” she began, her voice high with anxiety. “What the hell?”

“Stomach hurts,” he returned simply. “A lot.”

“Alright, this…this is insane. There’s no way you’d be in this much pain from food poisoning- something else has to be wrong. We need to go get help. Why the fuck didn't you tell me you were in this much pain?”

“I told you…I can rally.”

“You can- oh my God, you can’t even make it two feet out of bed.”

“Let me just…try again. The first time took me by surprise, that’s all.” Eliot wasn’t sure why he was maintaining such strict denial, because he knew for a fact that a second attempt would be a shit show.

“Uh huh. Sure.” Margo knew it, too. “Here’s what we're going to do. I’ll help you get to the shower, and if you can make it through that, we’ll talk about the possibility of waiting until we’re back home for me to drag your ass to a medical professional. If you keep making sounds like you just took a steel-toed boot to the balls, then I’m gonna drag your ass to a medical professional right now. Agreed?”

Eliot shook his head in affirmation and took Margo’s hand. He let her cautiously guide him back out of bed and snake her arm around his middle. The pain level still shot back up, but this time Eliot was both braced for it and very emotionally invested in avoided a hospital sentence.

They nearly made it all the way to the shower before Margo shifted her grasp awkwardly, and he stumbled just enough that Margo felt the need to tighten her grip. The added pressure on his middle sent a wave of agony so sharp into his stomach that no amount of self-restraint was enough to stop an outburst.

“Fuck!” Eliot hissed. “Dammit, please Bambi, don’t do that.”

He wormed his way out of her grasp and desperately leaning on the sink as he waited for his vision to return from a pain-induced black-out. Margo released him, holding her hands out of the way as if he had a gun aimed at her head.

“I hardly touched you!”

Eliot’s only rebuttal was to let out a groan that hopefully conveyed the sentiment that she truly had, because otherwise he wouldn’t be in this position.

“That’s it. I didn’t want to pull this card, but it’s my birthday tomorrow and literally the only gift I want from you is for you to cooperate with me. I’m calling a cab and we’re going to the ER. Right now.”

If Margo had just been reaming him for being an idiot like usual, Eliot might actually have tried to argue with her, but she sounded close to actual tears. Margo never, ever cried.

            “Anything for the birthday girl.”


	3. Everybody Wants the Same Thing

After throwing some sweatpants on over his damp pajamas and having a very uncomfortable conversation with a visibly concerned hotel concierge, Margo and Eliot managed to hobble their way into a cab and made it to the nearest A&E entrance. The ugly plastic waiting room chairs were a massive downgrade from the comforts of their five-star hotel, and Eliot found himself leaning heavily on Margo’s shoulder as he tried to keep himself upright long enough to explain the nature of his ailment to the shockingly apathetic nurse at the front desk.

“Please fill out these forms while you wait to have your name called,” the nurse recited, handing Eliot a clipboard and a pen.

“How the fuck doesn’t intense stomach pain get you priority admittance?” Margo groused the moment they were seated and out of earshot. “I swear to God, I bet these chucklefucks like to keep people waiting until all they can do is give them a toe tag. Cheaper that way.”

“Not helpful,” Eliot grit out. Just talking seemed to send a fresh set of knives on a mission to filet his insides, but it was worth it to make Margo stop audibly freaking out. It was starting to get to him; he couldn’t shake the image of his own toe-tagged body being stuffed into a cabinet in this random British hospital. Why hadn’t he taken this seriously until he was legitimately beginning to draft his will? He wondered if it was too late to give everything he had to Margo. She was most certainly the only person he trusted to know what to do with the carefully crafted wardrobe and expensive linens that he’d be leaving behind in his room back at Brakebills.

As if Margo could sense Eliot’s doomsday train of thought, she pointedly drained away all traces of anxiety from her expression and replaced it with a look of a business-like determination. She snatched the clipboard out of Eliot’s admittedly shaky hands.

“I bet I know all of the answers to these questions, anyway,” she correctly pointed out before getting to work listing Eliot’s height, weight, birthday, and family health history.

It was true that she knew the answers to most everything the forms might ask, but Margo still insisted on reading out each question and answer and waiting patiently for Eliot’s approval before aggressively scratching out words and checkmarks. Coming up with basic facts was a welcome distraction for both of them, he figured.

“History of jaundice?”

“I think I would have noticed that.”

“Alcohol use? How about I say just yes and leave it at that.”

“Mm-hmm”

“Illegal drugs?”

“Plead the fifth.”

“Allergies to any drugs or latex?”

They both paused for a moment, unsure.

“Probably not,” Eliot heaved out, not truly caring to wrack his brains hard enough to dreg up the necessary memories to confirm.

“Thank god for European healthcare, because I would hate to see us try to come up with your insurance information. Do you even have health insurance?”  

Eliot shrugged, which quickly turned into a flinch when a new flare-up of pain settled in. Looking around the room, he tried to get a sense of how many people were also in line for some medical attention. He was forced to abort that particular mission after making extremely uncomfortable eye contact with a young boy clutching a very misshapen arm close to his body. Both the boy and the woman next to him, presumably his mother, had the near-feral grimace of people who have been left on hold for far too long.

With the paperwork completed, Margo seemed to desperately need another job to keep her occupied enough to stay sane. The harsh tapping of her gorgeous new Jimmy Choo boots against the ugly linoleum floor clearly indicated that she was mere seconds away from verbally assaulting some unsuspecting hospital staff member.

“Do you think you could get me some water?” Eliot asked, not out of any particular thirst.

“They’d better fucking have some water in this place,” Margo replied, and returned moments later with two small Styrofoam cups in hand. They drank in silence, and Eliot couldn’t help but wish that they were drinking a pint out in the city like they were supposed to be. A glance at the clock showed that there were less than twelve hours left until Margo’s birthday.

He wanted to find the words to express to Margo that he was still committed to making it a good birthday just as soon as he was given proper assurance that he wasn’t on the brink of death. Or he was given just enough drugs to blot out the pain. He wasn’t picky.

However, his brain couldn’t seem to properly find the way to communicate any of that; he was far too preoccupied with the fresh wave of nausea that flooded in as soon as he managed to drain his cup of water.

“Oh, shit,” he blurted out as soon as he realized the inevitability of the situation. The broken-armed boy shot him a look of alarm, but the judgement of a random British kid hardly mattered. Eliot tried to make a hasty escape from his chair, but he was essentially paralyzed by his screaming, swollen stomach.

“El, what’s wrong?” Margo called, and she made the unfortunate mistake of standing in front of his chair, arms reaching out in attempt to steady him. In reward for her concern, Eliot retched up his water right onto her silk jumpsuit and designer shoes. Somehow, and in what was definitely a strong testament to her love for him, Margo refrained from letting out any sounds of revulsion. That same couldn’t be said for the rest of the room’s occupants, sadly; a chorus of gasps and groans added to the humiliation.

“I am so, so sorry,” is what Eliot wanted to say. Instead, what came out was more like, “guh…”

“Can we get a janitor in here?” the bored front desk nurse spoke into a phone, unaffected by the scene. 

It took Margo an agonizing moment to speak, but when she did find words, Eliot wasn’t sure if she was speaking to him or to herself.

“It’s fine. It’s gonna be okay.”

“…’m sorry, Bambi,” Eliot croaked out, beyond pitiful by this point.

“Excuse me, folks!” the janitor chimed in, having just appeared as though he had materialized out of a broom closet. Eliot dutifully shuffled his feet out of his mop’s splash zone.

Alongside the janitor was another nurse; this one looked hardly much older than Elliot and Margo were, and she seemed at least slightly more engaged in the whole process.

“You can come with me, ma’am!” she addressed Margo. “There’s a bathroom right this way- let’s see if we can salvage those beauties, shall we? I can lend you some slippers in the meantime.”

Margo shot Eliot a helpless, apologetic look before the nurse all but dragged her away down the nearest corridor.

“I’ll be back in a minute!” she announced to Eliot as she wrangled her way out of the nurse’s claw-like grip.

He tried to give her a solemn nod of approval and acceptance before she disappeared, but the prospect of alone time with a random janitor and a handful of fucked-up Brits was simply not ideal. 

However, when yet another nurse appeared in the waiting room just minutes later, this time trailing behind a wheelchair and calling his name expectantly, he felt panic rather than relief. How was Margo supposed to know where to go to find him? The thought of being abandoned to deal with the emergency room staff on his own was daunting, particularly since he felt like his stomach was liable to explode at any given moment.

For a moment, he considered asking the nurse if he could wait until Margo returned from her clean-up mission, but he was genuinely afraid that the floppy-armed boy and his mother would start a waiting room riot if he delayed the process any further.

“That’s me,” he said meekly, and let the nurse guide him slowly into the wheelchair. As seemed to be a frightening trend, the smallest movement made Eliot nearly black out in pain, so he spent the ride down the hospital corridors in an utter daze. He tried to brace himself for the short trip from the chair onto an awaiting gurney, but it hardly mattered. He was just proud of himself for managing to keep from throwing up again, though his face clearly betrayed the fact that it was touch and go in that regard.

“So, I see that you’ve come in with abdominal pain, fever, and vomiting,” a new set of scrubs stated from what felt like very far away. “We’re going to give you something for the pain and nausea while you wait for the doctor to be available to see you.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Eliot groaned, trying his very best to articulate the fact that he wanted drugs, he wanted them strong, and he wanted them now. To accentuate his point, he graciously rolled up the sleeve of sweater and offered his arm to the nearby nurse who appeared to be preparing a needle for him. She shot him a strange look before getting to work on setting up an IV port, and she was certainly not gentle about it.

Once certain that he was on his way to some hospital-grade relief, Eliot groped around through the deep pocket of his sweatpants for his phone.

Three missed calls and seven texts, all from Margo.

Also, 7% battery power, no wifi connection, and only wavering little bar of service.

Margo’s most recent message said ‘finally ditched nurse but no one will fuckin tell me where you are’.

“Fuck,” Eliot breathed. He tried to wrack his brains for directions to give Margo about his whereabouts, but his brain still didn’t seem willing to cooperate. The pain medication was causing the pain to fade at an alarmingly slow rate compared to how quickly it was making him feel less in touch with reality.

“Just relax, luv,” said the nurse who set up his IV.

Eliot wanted to glare at her, but he couldn’t muster the energy.

“Can someone get Margo?” he asked no one in particular. He barely recognized the voice as his own.

“I dunno who that is, but I’m sure she’ll come see you soon,” the nurse replied, her tone sweet but ultimately dismissive.

Abandoning hope of assistance from the nursing staff, Eliot turned back toward his phone. He opened a new message to Margo with the intention of at least texting her that he was on a gurney somewhere and semi-okay. However, upon glancing down towards the screen, he caught sight of his hands, which were flushed scarlet in a way he was fairly certain they hadn’t been only moments ago.

He opened his mouth to alert the world’s least helpful nurse that something weird was going on, but he couldn’t seem to find the breath necessary to form words. A shuddering wheeze was the best he could do.

The nurse had already turned away to speak to another patient, and she didn’t seem to hear his attempt to cry for attention. Eliot decided to find a new tactic but found that mentally regrouping from the first effort in his current state of panic just wasn’t happening. Without really thinking, he heaved himself into the closest thing he could get to a sitting position, dropped his phone in the process, and found that the room was now spinning so much that any other plans would have to be put on hold.

Whether it was the sound of his phone screen hitting the floor and shattering or the increased speed of the beeping from his heart rate monitor, something finally caught the attention of the nurse.

“I thought I told you to relax,” she called, ambling over to pick up his broken phone. She placed it on the small counter space beside his bed before catching sight of his reddening skin.

“I also thought you said you weren’t allergic to any medications,” she quipped, grabbing at his hand for a closer look. The color was spreading further towards his wrists, and the contact left a burning sensation.

“Are you having any difficulty breathing?”

Eliot merely wheezed again in reply, shocked that the answer to that question hadn’t already been obvious.

“Karen, can you get me point four milligrams of epinephrine?”

That was the last thing Eliot heard before he closed his eyes and blacked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found this chapter very hard to write, so yeah, it took me months.

**Author's Note:**

> I have some of the rest of this written but I'm slow as hell at writing so here's hoping I'll finish within the month...
> 
> I legitimately write faster when I get comments. Please. Leave some feedback.


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